This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
Ice may undesirably form or accrete on a variety of surfaces. Ice accretion severely hinders numerous technologies. Airplane wings, marine vessels, commercial and residential refrigerators and freezers, and various outdoor equipment, including wind turbines, power lines, and telecommunication towers, all can suffer from ice accretion in cold environments. Ice accretion and formation can inhibit functionality to the extent that safety is compromised. The strong adhesion between ice and most structural materials makes the removal of ice very costly, both energetically and economically. Mechanical, electro-mechanical, thermal and chemical methodologies are the current industrial standards for ice removal. Each of these methods involves either inputting enough force to break off any accreted ice, or inputting enough energy to melt the ice. There exists a need to develop surfaces where ice may be passively removed from a surface solely by the forces experienced during normal operation (i.e., removal with no external energy input).
While some conventional coatings have been developed that provide lower ice adhesion strength on a surface, such coatings have failed to be robust or durable enough to withstand outdoor elements. Further, such conventional coatings suffer from significant increases in ice adhesion strength after only a few icing and deicing cycles, making them impractical for long-term use as icephobic anti-icing surface coatings. Thus, a durable, robust icephobic material that is capable of being used on a variety of surfaces that substantially maintains an ice adhesion strength level during multiple icing and deicing cycles would be desirable. There exists a need to develop durable icephobic surfaces and methods for making them, where ice formation is minimized on the durable icephobic surface. Further, it would be desirable to form a durable icephobic surface where any accumulated ice does form that can be passively removed solely by the forces experienced during normal operation (e.g., with no external energy input).